A data storage system such as a Storage Area Network or SAN is composed of a set of physical storage devices (e.g., physical storage drives) that are grouped together into storage arrays called Redundant Array of Independent Disks or RAIDs. From a RAID group, logical storage units called Logical Units or LUNs are created and allocated to host computing devices to provide storage functions for operations or calculations being performed by the host computing devices.
Sometimes it is necessary to copy, i.e., replicate, data stored on one or more of these physical storage devices to one or more other physical storage devices, i.e., from one or more physical source storage devices to one or more physical target storage devices. The physical source and target storage devices may or may not be in the same RAID group. Typically, such a replication operation requires the administrator of the data storage system to designate a specific physical target storage device for each specific physical source storage device being copied. In addition, the administrator has to specify the appropriate mapping and masking designations for the replication operation. Such mapping and masking designations specify which LUNs are associated with which physical storage devices following the replication operation. However, when replicating a large number of source devices, these target device designating, mapping and masking tasks can be quite laborious for an administrator of the data storage system.
Accordingly, a need exists for improved storage replication techniques associated with data storage systems.